How much fishing can a fish population support? How will climate change and other factors (like deep sea mining, ship noise, more marine mammals, and pollution) affect fish populations? How will the locations of fish like mackerel, blue whiting, and herring change as the ocean climate changes? How does fishing compare to other activities in terms of its impact on the ecosystem?
To address these questions, fisheries management needs to transition from traditional fishery management, which looks at one species at a time, to ecosystem-based management (EBM), which considers the whole ecosystem.
Implementing EBM still faces many challenges related to 1) the relevance and robustness of the ecosystem assessment, 2) the capacity to anticipate upcoming changes, including those associated with climate change, and 3) the development of an efficient dialogue between science and policy. To address these challenges, IEA-NOR will 1) advance robust and transparent assessment of ecosystem condition and cumulative risks, 2) identify emerging issues, produce and evaluate ecological forecasts and climate change projections, and 3) strengthen the dialogue between science, policy, management and stakeholders. The work will involve spatial and temporal statistical modelling, semi-quantitative risk analysis, foresighting, numerical simulations of large ecosystem models, management strategy evaluation, and development of interactive digital tools including the use of large language models.
IEA-NOR will interact with policy, management and stakeholders to tailor research to end-user needs. IEA-NOR consists of a network of Icelandic, Faroese, and Norwegian researchers engaged in the Working Group on the integrated ecosystem assessments for the Norwegian Sea (ICES-WGINOR).
IEA-NOR will deliver: a range of ecosystem indicators and associated thresholds; a multisectoral transparent risk assessment; ecosystem outlooks from few years to multiple decades into the future; policy briefs and transparent & interactive tools to explore and understand the current and future state of the Norwegian Sea ecosystem and its fisheries. These will contribute to the management of sustainable fisheries in the context of climate change.
